U.S. Pat. No. 3,915,921 discloses copolymers of 60 to 95 weight percent carboxylic acid monomers, 39.9 to 4 weight percent of alkyl esters of acrylic acid wherein the alkyl groups contain 10 to 30 carbon atoms and 0 to 6 weight percent of crosslinking monomers. These polymers, when at least partially neutralized by a basic material, absorb large amounts of water, are effective thickeners, and form water mucilages that have a much greater resistance to loss in viscosity when in the presence of salts such as sodium chloride than prior art thickeners such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,798,053. While the materials described in these two prior art patents have many uses, there are some applications where these materials are not completely satisfactory. For example, as thickeners in print pastes for textile printing. When these prior art polymers are used in print paste formulations, the pastes often are stringy and/or have poor rheological properties, varying viscosities, often in undesirable ranges for printing, and do not result in good quality printing, i.e., use of such pastes do not provide sharp prints and high color yield because of wicking or flushing and loss of color on washing. Improved thickening agents that do not have these and other problems are desired.